US judge says he won't explain error-ridden ruling in Mississippi civil rights case
In an order, opens new tab on Friday, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate in Jackson, Mississippi said his July 20 decision contained 'clerical errors referencing improper parties and factual allegations,' and that he issued a new opinion after correcting the mistakes.
'No further explanation is warranted,' Wingate wrote.
The judge's decision, issued in a civil rights case brought by the Mississippi Association of Educators, stopped the state for now from enforcing a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in state universities and public schools.
After Wingate replaced the ruling with a corrected version, lawyers for the state asked, opens new tab him last week to clarify what had happened and to "preserve the record."
Wingate said in Friday's filing that judges have the authority to correct what he called clerical mistakes and errors arising from oversight or omission, and no further action was needed. He also declined to make the original, faulty ruling available on the public docket.
Wingate, the Mississippi attorney general's office and attorneys for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The state's lawyers have not publicly suggested a reason for the errors. They came to light the same week that a federal judge in an unrelated New Jersey case also retracted a decision containing seemingly made-up case citations and other errors.
In the New Jersey case, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last week that a temporary assistant had used an artificial intelligence platform to research the decision, and that the opinion was inadvertently issued before a review process was able to catch errors introduced by AI.
The judge in that lawsuit, Julien Xavier Neals, said in a notation on the docket that a corrected decision will be issued.
As the use of AI in legal work has grown, lawyers have faced ethics scrutiny or been sanctioned for failing to catch fictitious case citations or other mistakes produced by the technology and including the errors in case filings.
Indiana University law school professor Charles Geyh called the mistakes in the Mississippi and New Jersey rulings 'more egregious than I'm accustomed to seeing in federal court.'
The case is Mississippi Association of Educators et al. v. Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Mississippi, No. 3:25-cv-00417-HTW-LGI.
For plaintiff: Joshua Tom of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi Foundation; Robert McDuff of Mississippi Center for Justice; Amir Badat of Badat Legal; and Nicolas Stanojevich of Quinn, Connor, Weaver, Davies & Rouco
For defendant: Rex Shannon III and Lisa Reppeto of the Mississippi attorney general's office
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